


August 1st

by lunarlychallenged



Category: Tuck Everlasting - Miller/Tysen/Shear & Federle
Genre: F/M, as always, but i like it, if Winnie never met the Tucks, this is so much longer than I expected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 19:36:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14003178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: A look at Winnie's life, every August 1st, if she had never run away from home.





	August 1st

August 1st, 1893

“C’mon, Winnie,” she whispered to herself. The gate was right there, unlocked and tantalizingly close. All she would have to do is open it, take a step forward, and she’d be gone. She could go to her forest to prove to the toad that - well, to prove something to the toad. She wasn’t sure exactly what she had to prove. Maybe that she wasn’t totally under her mother’s thumb? Or, maybe, that she wasn’t scared to break the rules.

She could go to the fair. She could dance and eat and play games all night. She didn’t usually believe that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission, but since asking for permission had fallen through, asking for forgiveness didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

She could just run, long and hard and fast, until she couldn’t run another step. She was pretty fast, and it might be fun to see where her feet could take her if she let them lead. Really, it didn’t matter where she went, so long as she went somewhere, since this was the first time in ages that nobody was watching her. If she didn’t go right then, while the getting was good, she might never have another chance.

Winnie stood at her fence, looking longingly past the street and the trees, far past anywhere she had ever seen. Maybe there was something out there for her, something that would change everything. The first week of August was a week of magic and possibility; if anything wonderful would happen, that was the time. Wasn’t it about time she went and found something wonderful? 

Her hand inched toward the latch, but froze just as her fingertips brushed against the sun-kissed metal. Maybe it wasn’t time to find something. Eleven years wasn’t such a long time to have gone without adventures, not according to the stories her father used to read her. Most of those stories were about grown ups. Some of them were about teenagers, though, so maybe if she just bided her time, life would come find her. Maybe it would be better to stay and keep the peace, leaving the excitement to a more prepared Winnie Foster.

She stood at her fence, unmoving. As much as she rued her desire to be good, she genuinely enjoyed approval. Winnie wanted to leave, but she knew that she also wanted to come back. The idea of coming back and seeing her mother’s disappointed face was too much; she had already caused enough damage that day.

Miserably, maybe a little regretfully, Winnie shuffled back into the house. She would apologize, put her mourning gown back on, and spend the evening wishing she was somewhere else. 

 

August 1st, 1894

 

Hugo walked down Main Street, eyes glued to the ground and hands clenched into fists. He had been a deputy for almost a year, but he was still as twitchy and nervous a boy as always. Even so, Winnie smiled while she watched him walk. He was an awkward boy, certainly, but she thought that he was very kind. He was sixteen years old, practically ancient, but he still said hello to her every time he saw her.

“Hey, Hugo!”

He jumped a little at the sound of her voice, and a little more when he saw her. She was dangling upside down from the tree in her front yard, large chunks of hair falling free of her braid to float around her face. She wore a painfully bright pink dress; she had insisted upon wearing vividly colored clothes ever since her mother had let up on the wearing black. Sometimes, if she was feeling particularly petty, Winnie would wear things that clashed horribly. Green dresses with red ribbons, or a purple dress with a red flower crown.

“H’lo, Winnie,” he said. He paused for a second, unconsciously tipping his head to the side to look at her a little more clearly. “What are you doing?”

She shrugged; it was an awkward gesture while she dangled, but she rather fancied that it looked casual. It did not, but Hugo didn’t laugh. “Just hanging around, I guess. There’s not much else to do. Where are you going?”

“Just out patrolling,” he said with an ounce of pride. He puffed out his chest a little to show off his deputy badge.

“Have you ever seen a crime while you patrolled?”

“Well, I - no, not really.” He paused for a second, sheepish. “I sometimes help Mrs. Gagnon carry her groceries. Once I caught a runaway dog.”

Winnie let go of the branch and flipped to the ground. “How heroic.” Hanging from the tree had left her cheeks a deep scarlet color.

A little unsure of whether he was being made fun of, he fastened his eyes to the street again. “Yeah, well, I should probably get back to it. If I don’t walk around, who knows what’ll happen.”

She leaned up against the gate, a little envious. It wasn’t necessarily that she wanted to be deputy, but she was a little jealous that he was in a position that might have something happen. Nothing ever happened in Treegap, but if something ever did, Hugo was bound to be a part of it. “Good luck.”

He gave a jerky nod before continuing his hurried shuffle across town.

 

August 1st, 1895

 

Winnie whirled through town on her bike, pretending to ignore the stares she was getting while secretly basking in them. She had always sworn that she would cause some trouble if there was some to be made, and she had finally found something that felt as wonderful to her as it felt terrible to everybody else. 

She leaned her bike against the side of the general store and walked in. She didn’t need anything, but she had wanted to go to town, so she had convinced Granny that they just needed some strawberries so she would have the excuse to leave. As a thirteen year old, she had some freedom that she hadn’t been allowed in the past, but her family was still hesitant to let her be away from home for long if she didn’t have a reason to leave.

She filled a basket with strawberries, a newspaper, and as an afterthought, coffee grounds. Her mother loved coffee, but seldom bought it since she was the only one who enjoyed it. Winnie thought that maybe she owed it to her mother. She had practically had a stroke when Winnie walked downstairs that morning, and as delicious as that had been, Winnie felt a little bad. The coffee would be a peace offering.

“Winnie Foster?” The uncertain, maybe a little scandalized, question came from the sheriff. Winnie knew it was him before she even turned around; it took a great deal of effort for her to school her face into a pleasant smile instead of a smug grin.

“Sheriff Jackson! It’s so good to see you,” she said.

His eyes were trained on the ceiling, almost as though he was asking the Lord for patience. Hugo stood next to him, eyebrows practically at his hairline. “What are you wearing, girl?”

She blinked once, twice. She made a show of looking down at her clothes. “What? Oh, you mean my bloomers?”

“Yes, I mean your bloomers,” he said, aghast. “Where is your skirt?”

“Oh, sheriff,” she said. “Women don’t wear skirts with their bloomers when they ride bikes.”

“Here in Treegap, they do,” he replied.

He was right, of course. And even outside of Treegap, most women didn’t wear bloomers without skirts. Winnie had seen a picture in a magazine once in an article about suffragettes, and she had known that she just had to do it. Her mother would huff when she read those articles, but Winnie thought that she would very much have liked to join up with them if there was something like that in Treegap.

“Well,” she said, slightly flustered, “I don’t.” She had been so eager for people to see her that she hadn’t thought through what she would say to them when they questioned it. She had never been so comfortable in her entire life, but she wasn’t so sure that the sheriff, or any man, for that matter, would understand the appeal.

He harrumphed. The sheriff was not a very quick man, so she waited to see if he would come up with something, but he remained silent. 

“I think they’re great,” Hugo said. His lips twitched a little as he side eyed his father, but Winnie thought that he might have been sincere.

“Thank you, Hugo. They really, really are.” She nodded a good day to them and bought her groceries, basking a little in the encounter. The bloomers had been worth every penny.

 

August 1st, 1896

 

August was off to a terrible start, or so everybody in town seemed to think. It was positively boiling out. Propriety had been shed in favor of comfort. Usually Winnie was supposed to stay inside on days so hot as those, but the indoors offered no reprieve from the heat. Many of the townsfolk had congregated for an unofficial picnic in a field behind the library. It was where all town events took place if they needed a lot of room; Winnie sometimes wondered what it had been like the year she missed the fair. She went every other year, but she imagined that the one year she had been forbidden to go had been the year it was the most wonderful. She had wanted to go so badly. She thought that she vaguely remembered thinking about running away just so she could go, but she could hardly see the appeal of it now. She wouldn’t have had anybody to talk to, so the memories would not have mattered to anybody but herself.

She was laying back in the grass with some of the girls she went to school with. Well, she was laying back, but the other girls were huddled together talking.

“James is definitely the cutest,” Margaret said matter-of-factly. Margaret was the daughter of their teacher, and she said that he told her things about their classmates sometimes. Winnie suspected that Margaret actually got her gossip from the other students, who told her things when they wanted her to confirm them.

“He’s handsome,” Lillian Jacobs agreed, but she sounded lackluster. “I think that the cutest is-”

“Thomas Wilshaw,” the other girls chorused. Some sounded annoyed, others amused, but all were unsurprised. Thomas was certainly not the cutest boy, but Lillian had crushed on him for years. 

Winnie smiled in the grass. Her eyes were closed against the sun and the grass was crunchy against the back of her neck, but she felt like the air was charged. It felt like a holiday, or maybe just like magic. She had changed a lot since she was eleven, but she still stood by her belief that the first week of August was the most magical of all. More than the week of Christmas when the snow fell heavily and she could hardly see a foot in front of her face; more than the cool spring nights when the moon was bright and the bugs were still in hiding; more than mid-Autumn, when everything was dry and snapping and the bright stars seemed to sap the life out of the world. August was muggy and thick. Anything could happen.

“Who’s your favorite, Winnie?” The question was asked by Helen Greening, who Winnie sometimes ate lunch with, but everybody else twisted around to look at her.

“Dunno,” she said uneasily. Suddenly the pokey grass was too sharp and the sun was scalding.

“Come on, Winnie,” Margaret groused. “Don’t be so boring. You must have a favorite.”

“I’m not boring just because I don’t want to tell you something that you’ll just spread around,” she snapped back.

“So you do like someone,” Sarah Morris said, leaning forward eagerly.

“I don’t!” It was true, Winnie supposed, but she tried not to think about boys like that. When she was finally ready to leave for her adventures, she wouldn’t want to have some boy to hold her back. Heroines never have boys waiting for them at home, and if she brought him along, he might keep her from doing something wonderful.

Aside from that, romance was a risky business. Treegap was a very small town, and if somebody guessed that she was sweet on some boy, it would spread like wildfire. The truth of the rumor would not matter, and if the rumor spread about the wrong boy, several of the girls might stop talking to her. It seemed silly to her that girls called dibs on boys who had no interest in them, but who was Winnie to interfere with the conventions of the girls her age?

When she refused to talk about it any further, the girls backed down. Winnie was dozing, stuffed on lemonade and little sandwiches, when somebody’s words pulled her from the brink of unconsciousness.

“If only Hugo was a little more handsome,” Blanche said regretfully.

Some of the other girls agreed, saying that he was too jumpy to be incredibly handsome. Once Morgan Johnson had asked him to dance at a wedding, and he had stuttered so hard that she eventually left, if the stories were true. They said that he seemed absolutely terrified of girls. Maybe he wouldn’t get married at all.

Winnie squinted her eyes against the sun so she could look over at Hugo, who sat alone under a tree a ways away. He was eating a sandwich, batting at the lazily circling flies. Maybe he was a little odd, but he was handsome in his own way. She made him laugh once when they were talking by her gate before he started his patrol. She had been telling him about the time she hid a snake in her room for two weeks, and when she got to the part where her mother found it in her boot, Hugo had laughed so hard he had to lean against the gate for support. He had looked so wonderful that she stopped breathing for a second.

“I think Hugo is very good looking,” Winnie said loudly. The girls, who had moved on to talking about somebody else, fell silent to gape at her.

“What?” Lillian was squinting over at Hugo, uncertainty coloring her agreeable features. “Really?”

“Yes,” Winnie said forcefully. So maybe she hadn’t thought on it much before. Maybe she talked to him because he was the only person who didn’t treat her like she was strange. Maybe she had never thought about him romantically. That didn’t matter. Hugo was handsome, and those girls weren’t good enough for him.

“You like Hugo Jackson?” Margaret’s voice came out in a delighted sneer that made Winnie cringe. The cringe deepened when she comprehended the question. “No wonder you didn’t want to say.”

“I never said-”

“I cannot believe this,” she said gleefully. 

Winnie wished she could burrow herself down under the grass, into the dirt, where only the worms could find her. Worms wouldn’t care about things as trivial as boys. 

Over the course of the afternoon, Margaret spread the rumor about Winnie liking Hugo. The kids her age thought it was hilarious, but the adults thought it was cute, which was almost worse. She couldn’t stand the fond looks at the fourteen year old spitfire who had a crush on the eighteen year old deputy.

By the time she got home that evening, she had the energy to do nothing but mope, so Winnie was laying on her stomach in front of a toad. She liked to think that she always talked to the same toad, though she knew that it was unlikely. She talked to it about the rumor, the fact that her bloomers had a hole, and about how her mother had latched on to the idea of Winnie marrying Hugo in the few short hours since the thought had been planted.

“H’lo, Winnie,” the boy in question said.

She peered up at him. He stood right above her on the other side of the fence. She pulled herself to her feet. She hadn’t expected him to talk to her again once he heard. Though she disagreed with most of what her classmates said about him, he really didn’t know how to talk to girls. He had only been able to talk to Winnie because she had been a kid when they started talking, if Winnie had to guess.

“Hey,” she said breathlessly. “Off on patrol?”

“Actually, no,” he said. “Mrs. Johnson’s garden gnomes were stolen again.”

“Who’s your suspect?” The Lewis brothers were always the culprits, but that didn’t make it any less fun to theorize.

His lips curled up a little. “Diamond thieves. The Johnsons have been hiding their wealth for years, and the right people finally found it.”

“No,” she chided with a grin. Her heart was fluttering a little. Was that because of the picnic? Was it because she had expected him to never come back? Or maybe she had admired the way he looked in the setting sun for months, but had refused to acknowledge it. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Okay,” he scoffed. “What do you think happened, then?”

She leaned in close, conspiratorially. “The gnomes are alive. They’re spies, and they’ve finally gotten all of the information they needed. They’ve gone back to their base.”

He smiled broadly. “I should go talk to Mrs. Johnson. If I see any gnomes spying on me, I’ll let you know.” He was halfway across the block when she gathered the courage to call him back. He still had that hint of amusement of his face when he got back to her house. “What is it?”

“I didn’t expect you to come by today.”

He blinked at her, slow and confused, before his hands went to fidget with his vest. “Was I not supposed to?”

“No! You can always come by,” she said haltingly. “I just - I didn’t think you would want to.”

“Why not?”

With that question, Winnie realized that he hadn’t heard. Poor Hugo, who was seldom in on the latest news, had not been told that he was the innocent half of a false rumor. Suddenly hoping that he would never have to hear it, she made something up. “It’s just really hot out!”

His brow furrowed a little. “That’s never stopped me before. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes,” she said, relieved. Her cheeks burned. “I’m feeling wonderful, thank you.” After a pause, she offered him a shaky smile. “You know that you can’t ever listen to anything the girls my age say, right?” 

His frown deepened. “I don’t talk to the girls your age.”

“But you know that they don’t know what they’re talking about, ever, right?” The answer really, really mattered. Hugo was the only other person in Treegap who seemed to want anything to happen, and she couldn’t lose him because of a stupid conversation about something that could never happen.

“Well,” he said slowly, “I know that you never know what you’re talking about, so I wouldn’t trust anybody else, either.”

“Good,” she said with a happy sigh. He blinked at her, perhaps surprised that she hadn’t snarked back at him. “Good luck on patrol. Keep an eye out for rogue gnomes. You’re the first line of defense to protect Treegap from them.”

He snorted, but there was something almost like pride in it. He always seemed a little proud when Winnie teased him about being deputy. “Don’t worry, Treegap is safe.”

She watched him walk his stiff, awkward little walk up the street. Yes, she agreed silently. Treegap was in safe hands.

 

August 1st, 1897

 

When Winnie was fifteen, she spent the summer with her cousins in New York. The New York Fosters were richer than the Treegap branch, so Winnie’s mother sent her to stay with them in the hopes that she would make connections with high end people. Winnie also suspected that her mother wanted her to soak in some of the upper class manners. Instead, Winnie vowed to buy new bloomers and take part with any women’s suffrage rallies she could find.

The oddest thing about New York was the way nobody seemed to know each other, at least not in the circles the Fosters ran in. In Treegap, everybody knew everybody else. In New York, people ignored each other unless they had something to gain from a relationship. On several occasions, Winnie had to be dragged away from store owners and newsboys and girls selling flowers because she wanted to stay and ask them questions. 

The summer was a whirlwind of parties where nobody had anything interesting to say and going to call on people who didn’t really want to see her. She would make jokes, but the laughs were all false. She would try to make up entertaining stories, but nobody cared about the entertainment value.

It was the first August the she remembered beginning with no excitement. She was not optimistic or happy. She did not welcome the mugginess or the heat. She found herself missing Treegap. She hadn’t quite given up on the idea of adventuring, but she knew for certain that she would never come back to New York. She wanted things to happen.  
She missed her woods, and she missed her toad. 

She missed her mother and Granny. She missed the sheriff. She missed Hugo. She had never expected to say that she missed Treegap, but she missed her life there. She would take a life surrounded by people she loved over a life of permanent strangers, any day.

 

August 1st, 1898

 

The fair had come back to Treegap, as it did every year, but this was the first year that her mother had agreed to let Winnie go without a chaperone. For the first time, Winnie was free to do as she pleased and to stay out all evening. As late as she wanted, so long as she didn’t do anything foolish. Everything left of that eleven year old girl came roaring to life; her mouth watered all day as she imagined eating funnel cakes and cotton candy, her feet itched to dance, and she spent an hour scrounging around the house for forgotten coins she could use to play games. 

It was everything she had ever dreamed of, and it wasn’t just because she got sometimes got bored of monotony. The food was greasy and melted in her mouth. The fair troop was smooth and charming. The games were silly and fun, and Winnie could have spent hours throwing darts or tossing rings at bottles. She might have too, had it not been for a band starting to play.

It was the dancing that she had really been eager for. She danced on her own; she danced with boys. She danced with Thomas Wilshaw, though she felt Lillian and some of the other girls glaring daggers at her. She danced until she thought her ankles would surely break under the strain of it, and then she danced some more. 

Finally, chest heaving, she decided that it was time to leave the circle of dancers in the square. She could get something to drink and head back home. She didn’t want the night to end, but she was sure that she could stay until her own life ended before getting bored. The sun had gone down hours before, but lanterns flickered cheerfully throughout the field. She would call it a night right then and leave feeling totally perfect.

“Winnie? Are you going already?” 

She turned to see Hugo, fully outfitted in his work suit and completely out of place in the casual crowds of people. She beamed at him, cheeks aching from the nonstop smile she had worn all evening. “Already? It’s the middle of the night.”

“No - I just meant - We haven’t danced yet,” he said. He did not meet her eyes, and maybe it was just the firelight, but she thought that he might have been blushing.

“I didn’t know you danced,” she said stupidly.

“It’s the fair,” he said simply. “Everybody dances at the fair.”

She nodded, a little stupefied. Hugo wanted to dance with her? He wanted to hold her hand, or maybe her waist, in the middle of a group of people who would all be watching? Perhaps more shocking, she found that she wanted to dance with him. Not just because she loved to dance, either. “So,” she prompted.

“So,” he continued, “can I have a dance before you leave?”

She gave him his dance. She wanted to make some kind of witty conversation in the midst of it, but found herself void of all humor. She just wanted to dance. She wanted to speed through the parts where she and Hugo were separated to get to moments that she held his hand. She wanted to block out the eyes of her peers, who she thought would be laughing at them from the sidelines. She wanted to get rid of the butterflies in her belly, but thought that maybe the butterflies had the right idea.

Hugo did not maintain eye contact through the dance, and as soon as it ended, he moved to leave. She caught his hand, and when he looked back at her, he looked a little afraid.

“Are you leaving already?” She sounded desperate, even to herself.

“We just danced,” he said. It was almost a question.

“Yeah,” she agreed, “we danced once. But this is a fair, and it only comes once a year.”

“That’s true,” he said with a new light in his eyes.

“I think, just this once, we could dance again.”

So they danced, tension broken, conversation flowing freely. She teased him about coming to a party in uniform. He told her that when somebody tried to murder her while she walked home, she would be happy that the police were on duty. 

“Well,” she panted. They had danced again not once, but three times. “If you really think a murderer is afoot, I probably shouldn’t walk home alone.”

“You’re always safer when I’m around,” he agreed, smile crinkling his eyes.

He walked her home, walking slowly for once, and Winnie was left feeling empty when he turned the corner to go to his own house. The hollowness, unfamiliar and unexpected, was not what she had hoped to feel at the end of the fair. But when she laid in bed that night, she couldn’t bring herself to regret staying.

 

August 1st, 1899

 

Winnie spent the summer of her seventeenth year searching in vain for fairies in the wood. She wasn’t so certain that she believed they were out there, but she decided that of all of the things that could have been making the music that her grandmother had heard for decades, fairies were the most appealing possibility. What could be better than magical fairies? Maybe, she imagined on one of her many evenings spent combing the undergrove for signs of magic, they would let her come live with them. Winnie Foster, fairy changeling. An appealing idea. 

Or maybe, she thought with growing delight, she herself was already a changeling. That would explain the way she didn’t fit in with the other girls in town. Maybe her real family would come for her in a year, once she was eighteen, and take her away to whatever magical life was waiting for her.

She said as much to Hugo at the beginning of August, who sometimes joined her as “part of his patrol.”

He was sitting on a rock while she dropped down juicy apples from a stray tree. He caught them in his suit jacket when he could, but Winnie wasn’t trying to toss them to him. She dropped them haphazardly, joyously imagining her life with the fairies.

He bit into an apple thoughtfully. “Why would you want to go with the fairies when you could live in Treegap?”

“Why would I want to live in Treegap when I could go with the fairies?”

“Maybe fairies don’t have fairs,” he said.

“Of course they have fairs! Besides, we hardly have fairs, so it’s not much of a selling point,” she replied. She hopped down from a branch and rolled into a crouch. “I’ll bet they have wonderful parties.”

“The war with the gnomes might be sapping the fun out of everything,” he countered. “Maybe your new family would be mean or love the human baby better.”

She considered it. It would be difficult to raise a child for eighteen years and not love it, at least a little. It would be harder still not to compare your new child to the old. “Maybe,” she admitted. “But it would be the most incredible adventure.”

He picked at an apple seed that had settled at the core. “Those kinds of adventure are dangerous.”

“That’s part of the fun,” she said. She nudged her shoulder against his as she settled down on the rock next to him.

“Well,” he said with a false cheer, “Treegap wouldn’t be the same without you.”

Winnie felt heat spreading from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair. “Well, I suppose I couldn’t go on an adventure without my protector, could I?”

“And leave Treegap unprotected? Never.” He shined his badge, which now read “Detective” in bright gold.

“I guess I’d just have to come back and visit,” she said. She could never leave Treegap forever. Forever was too long to be away from her loved ones.

“Well,” he said with a crooked smile, “none of this matters if we can’t find the music. Let’s keep looking.” He held out a warm hand to help her up and tossed the apple core over his shoulder. 

Winnie would have loved to find fairies, but she was a little relieved every night when she didn’t. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to go on an adventure by herself anymore.

 

August 1st, 1900

 

The new century ushered in many new ideals, but Winnie felt as though her own goals were not the same as her mother’s. As soon as Winnie turned eighteen, her mother started inviting family friends over at increasingly frequent rates. At first, Winnie hardly noticed. She only cared if being home well before dinner to get ready would interfere with whatever she had planned for the day.

It wasn’t until she ran into Margaret at the general store that Winnie was made aware of what was happening.

“Winnie!” Margaret’s squealed greeting was clearly fake, but Winnie still smiled a weak grin at her.

“Hello, Margaret.”

“It has been far too long. What have you been up to?”

Winnie shrugged. “Not too much. I’ve been-”

“That’s wonderful,” Margaret gushed. “How’s the husband hunt going?”

Winnie froze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh?” The other girl’s look of surprise was so clearly put on that Margaret would probably wish that she had a maid to help her get it off. “I must be mistaken. I thought that was why your mother kept having all of the boys over.” She promptly left with a wave and a sneer.

Winnie stood in the aisle, aghast. She hadn’t noticed that it was only the families with eligible sons being invited over, but once it had been pointed out, her mother’s actions over the past few months made so much more sense. The new dresses made more sense, the way she was supposed to look her best every time she went to town, how her mother forced her to talk more when they had guests. 

She had stormed home, fury and self-righteousness thrumming through her veins. She seldom slammed the door, but she felt like it was the right kind of punctuation to the roar she let out when she stomped inside. “Mother!”

“Winnie? Don’t slam the door like that, dear.”

She followed the sound of her mother’s voice into the sitting room, where the older woman sat with a book. She looked up, smiled, and promptly set the book down when she saw Winnie’s face.

“Mother,” Winnie grated out. “Why have you been inviting so many boys over?”

Her mother shrugged, the picture of ease. “It’s not my fault that so many of our friends have sons.”

“Then why haven’t we been inviting over Lillian’s family? Margaret’s? Sarah’s?”

“Did you want them to come over?” Her mother looked surprised, but a little pleased.

“No,” Winnie groaned. “That’s not the point. Everybody is saying that you’re trying to marry me off, and you’re inviting people over to show me off.” Maybe not everybody, and maybe Margaret hadn’t said the bit about showing off, but the guilt on her mother’s face said enough. “Did everybody know but me?”

“It’s not as though I’ve been saying that that was the point,” she soothed. “Maybe I said that you might make a good match-”

“With every boy in Treegap?”

“They didn’t all agree,” her mother said defensively. 

Winnie faltered at that. She wasn’t pleased about being shown off like some prized cattle, but she was foolishly hurt that some families didn’t even bother coming ‘round at all. “Like who?”

Her mother rattled off a few names, but Winnie zeroed in on one. “The Jacksons declined your invitation?”

Surprise and understanding flickered across her mother’s face. Understanding, since she had been so sure that Winnie had a crush on him all those years ago, and perhaps surprise that Winnie still cared at all. “I talked to Hugo and his father, and Hugo said that he knew you wanted to leave someday. He doesn’t want to leave, so it was probably better to avoid starting something altogether.”

Winnie didn’t know what to say. She opened her mouth, hoping that something scathing and witty would come out, but instead her question sounded very hurt. “You told Hugo that we would be good together?”

“Of course. You two have been close for years; it was only sensible to go to him first.”

Another blow. “You went to him first?”

Her mother was looking at Winnie as though she was rather slow. “Well, he is your favorite.”

“And he said no?”

“He didn’t disagree, per se. He just thinks that you want different things.”

Winnie stormed off to her room, less angry than she was unhappy. She hadn’t liked the idea of a husband hunt, but she had no idea what to do with the fact that Hugo had refused to come for dinner at all.

But could she really blame him?

Winnie had no idea what she wanted. She did want adventures; that wasn’t a desire that she ever expected to go away. Even so, her definition of adventure had changed. She could go on without the adventures she read about in books. Living in the world - seeing the world - was enough. She just hadn’t considered whether she would stay in Treegap or not. A part of her had always assumed that she wouldn’t, but that had been because she hadn’t expected anything to keep her there.

She was no stranger to the way Hugo made her feel, but she thought that she would never end up with him because he didn't want her. It had never occurred to her that he might want her, but that he would never say anything because he thought that she would rather have the world than have him.

 

August 1st, 1901

 

The year had passed slowly. It was generally made up of uneventful days, punctuated by shining moments with Hugo and her mother’s continued efforts to make Winnie into an ideal bride. Winnie did her best to seem uninterested in the boys that came, but she thought that they were relieved by it. Maybe they were victims of idealistic families, too.

Winnie had always assumed that she was a very courageous person, but the past year had shown her that there were many different kinds of courage. She had always understood the courage required for heroics, but she had never considered the courage it took to simply live. She had not thought about the fact that sometimes, just saying hello to somebody took some courage, or that it took courage to speak her mind when she wasn’t sure how her message would be received.

She tried over and over again to gather the courage to talk to Hugo about the husband hunt, but she failed every time. That goal was the bane of her existence, since it seemed to have no end in sight, but it was a little nice, too. Every time she failed, she ended up getting to spend time with him. They went on walks, met for tea, and played chess in the summer sun. It always ended in her beating herself up over missing an opportunity, but he always looked happy to have seen her.

She was counting on the magic of the beginning of August to give her the ability to speak her mind, so when she joined him on his patrol on the evening of August first, it was with great hope and great fear.

They walked in companionable silence while she tried to figure out how to start. She had never been able to think of a good enough conversation starter. She could just talk about her mother’s goal casually, then mention how odd it was that Hugo had never come. She could say that she was thinking about staying in Treegap, then hope that he had the nerve to tell her how he felt. If he felt the same, at least, which Winnie could not be sure that he did. Or, as she was growing closer and closer to doing, she could tell him flat out how she felt about him.

They took a break from patrolling under a large large ash tree, but neither sat. They stood together in the shade, coated in the mottled, dying sunlight that filtered through the leaves. She snatched at a firefly, and when she felt it settle in the palm of her hand, she gently nudged it onto Hugo’s waiting hand. She had just gotten the fifth bug to stay there when he jumped a little, startling them all off.

“I thought I heard a bug buzz in my ear,” he said sheepishly.

“That’s my detective,” she teased. “Nerves of steel.”

“My nerves are fine when I need them to be,” he said.

“Oh, really? I didn’t know that there were many times you needed to be brave in Treegap.”

His shoulders were hunched in a little; she wasn’t used to seeing him nervous when it was just the two of them. They had their own language when they were alone.

“Maybe not that kind of brave, but there are other kinds,” he said.

Winnie knew all too well that he was right, but she didn’t want to misunderstand. “What kind of brave are you?”

“Never the kind that I want to be,” he said, and Winnie felt her knees go a little weak. Hugo had the most beautiful eyes, as she had swooned over in private many times before, but she had never noticed how painfully expressive they could be. He looked so sad, so wishful, that she wasn’t sure that she would ever have the courage to tell him how she felt about him.

If she couldn’t say it outright, she would just have to say it in a different way. Winnie took his face into her hands, and when he didn’t pull away, she kissed him. His hands spasmed at his sides for a moment, like he couldn’t decide what to do with them. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, he finally settled his hands against her waist. 

After a second, he jerked away, shaking his head violently and squeezing his eyes shut. “I can’t - I’m sorry, but I just can’t -”

“Marry me,” Winnie said. It just popped out, as though it was the obvious thing to do.

“What?”

“Let’s get married. It doesn’t have to be today, or anytime soon, really, but someday. I really, really want to marry you,” she said. Everything was happening out of order, and Winnie knew it, but she didn’t suppose that either of them had ever been good at doing things the way others expected them to.

Hugo looked totally nonplussed, but she could see a little delight mixing in with the confusion. “But you - but I -”

“Hugo, I want to marry you,” Winnie said again. “We’ll stay in Treegap. We’ll make our own adventures, and we’ll be so, so happy. I’ll make you happy, I promise.”

He gave a bewildered laugh. “I never thought that you wouldn’t. I just,” he stopped and took a deep breath. “You wanted to leave.”

She took a careful step closer. This time, he didn’t move away. “I think that it’s been a while since I really wanted to leave.”

He moved a little closer, too. “And you really want to marry me?”

Oh, yes, Winnie absolutely wanted to marry him. She wanted to have a home with him, filled with books and laughter and stories and love. She wanted to hold his hand. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to have his children. She wanted to wake up in the morning and see him sleeping next to her, completely at ease the way he only ever was when they were alone together. She wanted to go to bed with him every night, knowing that the person she loved most in the world was right next to her. She just wanted him, and didn’t think that there was anyone in the world that could make her doubt that choice.

“That’s the greatest adventure I can imagine,” she said.

He was smiling harder than she had ever seen him. It was as though his happiness, bewildered though it may have been, was too big for his small body to hold. He was almost laughing when he dropped to one knee. “Okay. Let’s get married. You and me, Winnie.”

Winnie’s cheeks were wet; she hadn’t noticed when she started crying. She hadn’t thought that she would get to have this; she hadn’t ever expected to find somebody.

“I’ll show you the world,” he said earnestly. “Anywhere you want to go, and we’re there. We can have everything.”

She nodded, a hiccoughing laugh escaping. Why was she crying? She was the one that had kissed him, and she was the one that had proposed. Her heart felt so full, and she wasn’t sure she could bear it. She didn’t understand how the happiness could feel so big that it almost felt like sadness, but it filled her with an ache so terrible and perfect that she thought that it must be killing her. She loved Hugo, and she was going to marry him.

Winnie dropped to her knees and threw her arms around him again, burying her face into his neck.

“I love you,” he said into her hair. She could feel him smiling, so she pressed her lips against his neck in response. He held her close, so close that she felt like she might break, but she didn’t think she would ever be close enough.

This was it. She had always thought that there was something out there that she needed to find, and it was this. It was Hugo. It was loving somebody. It was looking forward to the future, and knowing that it was out there waiting for her. It was great and terrible and she wanted it, more and more with each second that passed. Everything she had ever hoped to feel, the happiness that she had always hoped to find, was there in Treegap. It was there in Hugo. She wouldn’t have to choose between living and having a life, because he was the one person in the world who knew how to give her both.


End file.
